Monday, January 18, 2010

There's an interesting piece at the New Statesman site on a survey of Conservative prospective Parliamentary candidates. Of the 141 respondents from winnable seats we get an extremely interesting cross section of what the real Tory Party priorities actually are.

It's not surprising that their top priority is reducing the budget deficit, "cutting red tape", and reducing welfare payments - although I seem to remember the Thatcher government was very keen on reducing the welfare bill but due to their financial mismanagement it went up year on year anyway.

I was surprised to see that 'victory in Afghanistan' was waaaaaay down the list. Interesting, as the only thing their leader seems to have to say about the war is that we need to invest more money in for new choppers, etc. but prehaps there is a strong current of revolutionary defeatism among the Tory ranks that has hithertogone undetected.

The fact that they aren't that interested in improving the rail network is not earth shattering news though, although God alone knows they must be among the only people in the country who don't desperately want the rail network sorted.

Second from last? Affordable housing. Well, you know, housing isn't very important is it? Particularly the cost of housing. I don't think any voters worry about that at all do they?

Anyway, I was leaving the best til last - or at least the Tory PPCs were. Vote blue get green? Ummm... nope. Less than ten of the respondents (or 5.6% if you prefer) thought that taking action on climate change should be a priority, and it was ranked lowest in importance of all the areas the candidates were asked about.

The thing is, I don't expect them to actually do anything about it. They say they'll reduce the welfare bill and cut red tape and they wont do that either, but at least pay lipservice to climate change for goodness sake. They might want to consider that quite a lot of people regard it as possibly the most pressing issue facing the world today... not the prospective Tory MPs though obviously.

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